"But biking and walking save money, promote better health than sitting in a car, and ease traffic congestion, which makes the city more livable for everyone."

Of course they are going to oppose it. Exercise and fresh air promotes sanity and that's threatening their mindset.

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The tribalist regulars, you know the kind, they like songs, military themes, anthems and conspiracy theories. The same sad folk at either end of the political spectrum who's line of argumentation and thinking processes follow the identical fashionable nonsense pattern, only the targets of their attentions differ.

Eggs must be cut from the small side or the large side and its war to defeat the Heathen who dare to open a soft boiled egg from the Wrong Side.

Biking paths leading to one-world governments? Ha ha! From now on, whoever fears a one-world government is CRAZY! (No matter how likely their arguments)

Hey, if whenever we say "Ron Paul" we follow it up with "and the tin foil hat people" we will not only convince others that what Ron Paul is saying is CRAZY but that its CRAZY to even listen to what he is saying! Just like only Homosexuals want to prevent wars and only Anti-Semites would criticize Israel and only communists want to preserve a minimum standard of living for others.

Worrying about your savings and incomes? Why that’s as silly as worry about aliens! The only reason those crazy tin foil hatters worry about our futures is because its ‘fashionable’, therfore because of this everyone should disregard what they say.

I see UN vehicles in Afghanistan, maybe something of the hubristic monolithic nature of the organization, that they purposely paint UN in bright blue letters on their SUVs so the insurgents know exactly what vehicles to VBIED and what locations to attack. I could see announcing yourself like that might be useful in any other place except Afghanistan.

I support a worldwide federal government, and bike paths. In fact, I often think of how great Boston/Cambridge would be if half the streets were closed to motor vehicle traffic. So maybe there is something to this fear.

I think Revelation is the source of the distaste for a world government, as it is associated with the Antichrist and the End Times. This idea was most recently popularized in the Left Behind books, which I'm sure many Georgians read.

"The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months. It opened its mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world."

Then we had the Kingdom of God on earth, known as the Holy Roman Empire.

Today's evangelicals should LOVE and HASTEN the one world government, because then Judgement Day will be at hand, and they will be lifted to heaven as BILLIONS die in the glorious finality of God's eternal and endless LOVE AND COMPASSION for His creation.

But don't we support Israel so that they can serve as Jesus's army and fight the antichrist's armies from three directions? I thought the plan was to hasten the end times, fulfill biblical prophecy and get the faithful on the fast track to heaven.

J.F.,
Dude, you need to back away from the edge. Why is half your blog post devoted to the rantings of the lunatic fringe? I hazard a guess that the Georgia sales tax is generating a lot of reasonable, healthy debate in opposition, so why trivialize it by citing to the extreme flakey opposition arguments that are likely ignored by 90% of your electorate?
If Georgians don't want a one cent sales tax increase, then so be it. That does not automatically mean that they are rejecting it because they somehow fear the U.N. flag will be waving over their statehouse.
Remember Neitzsche's warning (paraphrased): He who battles the lunatic fringe should take care they he himself does not become the lunatic fringe, for when you gaze long at lunacy, lunacy gazes into you.

"Georgia sales tax is generating a lot of reasonable, healthy debate in opposition"

Yeah, I'm betting conservative fringers are right for the wrong reason.

On general principle I vote against all penny-ante taxes, especially taxes advertised as "costs less than a daily cup of coffee" or whatever. If the tax is as minor and the benefit as awesome as claimed, proponents should be willing to fight for a cut of our very adequate current tax revenues.

Why not? I've called politicians worse. Just getting elected to office is no guarranty you are not a lunatic or an idiot. The proof of a pudding is in its tasting, or as the great philosopher from Alabama, Forrest Gump, put it "stupid is as stupid does".

Over 30 years ago, I had the pleasure of hearing someone at a public hearing in Fairbanks, Alaska state that the right to drive your own car was explicitly written in the US Constitution. The fact that cars didn't exist at the time of drafting caused no cognitive dissonance. Having worked with some folks from the UN, I suspect the source of much of the controversy comes from well educated people who are working hard at not going back to their own country. The scientific work of the UN is often excellent (can you say Rinderpest?), but the political policy drives people afraid of the future Bat Crap Crazy.

Agenda 21 is real. It's a Republican plot; executive orders were signed by George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush to implement it. This negative publicity is an attempt to distract us from the reality that the Republican Party is behind it.

With the exception of my vote in 2002, none of the folks the "represent" me are people I've voted for. I did vote for Obama in 2008, but I live in Texas, so that was mostly an exercise in futility, as it will be again this year.

As for internationalism, wouldn't it have been nice, on balance, if the French, of all people, had actually had the power to keep the US from invading Iraq?

The hoohah about Agenda 21 is hilarious. I first encountered Agenda 21 as a wet-behind-the-ears, starry-eyed model UN delegate in high school a decade ago. It was a stupid set of nonbinding resolutions with even less moral force than the UN's general assembly then, and since that day I've learned that most everything that comes out the UN's policy arms is like the pirate code: "More like guidelines."

I cannot understand this fascination with international organization conspiracy theories. Just the other day I had a fantastic exchange with someone on the AIChE forums where I pointed out that, according to the IEA, "oil" production hit a peak in 2006. Bearing in mind that these particular forums require the use of your real name, this guy still decided to ragequit by claiming that any UN organization is corrupt and can't be trusted. It's a good thing he quit, too, since five people subsequently pointed out that the IEA is part of the OECD, not the UN.

Alright, fine, we can dispute the merits of paternalistic laws. We can try to sensibly weight the costs and benefits of funding new transportation infrastructure (a no-brainer, I think) and similarly weigh the costs and benefits of constructing that infrastructure for cars or for mass transit/walking/cycling. But someone please make sure that the loonies there stop getting their information on the UN from really bad Wesley Snipes movies.

We all know that the reason the UN wants people to walk and bike more is to improve their fuel stocks for their black helicopters.

General Jack D. Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: I... no, no. I don't, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works

And true patriots don't use toothpaste, either, because that contains fluoride. And we must protect our precious bodily fluids, now, don't we?... A casual glance in the general direction of the oral area of true patriots will confirm this truth...

I can no longer sit back and allow, communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy, to sap and impurify, all of our precious bodily fluids!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KvgtEnABY